SH 130 Edition Trailer

Watch the drama about the demise of Texas' first foreign-owned toll road. Watch the Trailer

Texans know what they like:

There may be no such thing as a free ride, but that doesn’t mean Texas drivers can’t dream. According to a new study from Texas A&M Transportation Institute researchers, the state’s drivers would like more investment in everything from sequenced traffic lights.Read about the study...

The Pitfalls of P3s

Randy Salzman's work is the most comprehensive look at the dangers of P3s to date. It's a must read for citizens and policymakers alike. Salzman’s entire expose on P3s in the June/July 2014 Issue of Thinking Highways.Read the story...

Full Film Now Online!

Truth Be Tolled is essential viewing for anyone who wants to understand how big money interests and government bureaucrats are hell bent on tolling Texas highways in spite of an overwhelming taxpayer opposition.Watch TrailersWatch Full Film

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Note to Trump: Key states tossed pro-toll incumbents

Trump take heed: Toll roads a factor in Florida, North Carolina, and Texas electionBy Terri HallNovember 9, 2016Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research

With the historic election of Donald Trump to the American Presidency, it signals a total repudiation of the political establishment by the working class. You could call it the election of the American worker. But analysts would be remiss if they failed to overlook how toll roads played a part in several races in key states.

One of the most notable races is for governor in North Carolina — must-win state for Trump that went red. Yet, Republican Governor Pat McCrory is in a nail biter photo finish to retain his seat in a state that went Republican last night. The very real threat by Democrat Roy Cooper who claimed victory Wednesday morning, though most still believe the race too close to call, is in part due to McCrory losing support among his base thanks to his approval of the controversial public private partnership (P3) toll project on Interstate-77 in Charlotte.

Will the feds ban human drivers?

The feds are comin after you. The elitist bureaucrats in Washington think human-created self-driving cars are superior to actual humans driving cars. Go figure that one out. Bottom line, your freedom to travel is at serious risk. This is about government control and keeping a finger on the switch and being able to herd everyone around like cattle in a big game of Sim City using all of us as human specimens.

New rules of the road for robot cars coming out of Washington this week could lead to the eventual extinction of one of the defining archetypes of the past century: the human driver.

While banning people from driving may seem like something from a Kurt Vonnegut short story, it’s the logical endgame of a technology that could dramatically reduce -- or even eliminate -- the 1.25 million road deaths a year globally. Human error is the cause of 94 percent of roadway fatalities, U.S. safety regulators say, and robot drivers never get drunk, sleepy or distracted.

Autonomous cars already have “superhuman intelligence” that allows them to see around corners and avoid crashes, said Danny Shapiro, senior director of automotive at Nvidia Corp., a maker of high-speed processors for self-driving cars.

Alamo city: New road funds squandered so 1604 and I-35 can be tolled

New road funds to be squandered on non-priority projects to force tolls on major congested corridorsLoop 1604 on the north side and I-35 commuters targeted for toll taxes, while other corridors are notBy Terri HallOctober 16, 2016

On September 27, TxDOT's San Antonio District Engineer Mario Jorge presented a list of projects to use up the Prop 1 and Prop 7 funds. We see many red flags and we’re very concerned. First, as usual, we’re being told Loop 1604 and I-35 ‘have’ to be tolled. So let’s look at the projects that are consuming the new funding, precisely so Texans wouldn’t be tolled.

First, the San Antonio district will be receiving $2.3 billion in unallocated NEW funds over the next 10 years. It’s critical these funds go to the top priorities, which are I-35 and Loop 1604. The Governor made clear these funds are to go to the most congested roads first.

BOMBSHELL: Senators find out tolls charged on roads that are paid for

It’s not often that the very sleepy subject of transportation offers a fiery discussion, but yesterday’s Senate Transportation Committee meeting did not disappoint. In a rare olive branch extended to grassroots anti-toll advocacy groups, Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom and Texans for Toll-free Highways, Chairman Senator Robert Nicholsinvited them to address the committee about one of its interim studies - a study on the elimination of toll roads.

Just the title evokes strong emotions on both sides of the issue, and those emotions were in plain view Wednesday. Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) Executive Director James Bass laid out the numbers of how much it would cost to retire tolls on roads built with state funds. Let me say that again, toll roads that were built with state money. That means gasoline taxes and other state funds were used to build the road, but Texas drivers are being charged again, through tolls, to use it — a double tax scheme.

Such policies pushed by today's urban planners are called 'complete streets,' aimed at making corridors accommodating to all modes of travel, including cyclists and pedestrians. However, such dedicated or restricted lanes are deliberately anti-car, shrinking auto capacity in order to force drivers out of their cars and onto a bike or bus. Complete streets also means planned, permanent auto congestion -- by design.

VIA fails to see its growing irrelevanceRandal O’TooleFor the Express-NewsAugust 28, 2016

VIA transit officials are seeking to raise local taxes to build exclusive bus lanes, and possibly light rail, in major corridors throughout San Antonio. This sounds a lot like the light-rail tax that voters defeated and the ATD tax that voters approved but hasn’t delivered the advanced transportation or roads that were promised.

What VIA fails to see — or hopes taxpayers won’t see — is that transit is not only irrelevant to most San Antonians today, it will be even more irrelevant in the years ahead.

VIA’s Vision 2040 plan notes that San Antonio’s population may grow 80 percent by 2040, which means that the sales tax revenues that provide VIA with most of its funding will also grow by at least 80 percent. But VIA wants more so it can build its own network of transit routes and traffic signals to give its buses (and rail cars) priority over everyone else at intersections.

Finally some good news for Terrell and Pat Graham. Amidst the backdrop of the scenic Texas Hill Country, a three-year war over property rights has been waged by a private developer against the Grahams, whose cattle ranch has been in Pat’s family for over 100 years. The developers of Johnson Ranch, David Hill Johnson Brothers (DHJB), decided to dump its treated sewage onto their neighbor’s property in order to maximize its profits and cram as many houses as possible into its subdivision rather than contain the sewage within its own boundaries. When the Grahams fought back, DHJB resurrected a dormant Municipal Utility District (or MUD), stacked it with board members in its pocket, and sought to take the Graham’s property using eminent domain for its private project. Monday, after a fierce fight, including from its own residents, and a million dollars in legal costs (combined from both sides), the Johnson Ranch MUD decided to drop its lawsuit to condemn the Graham’s property using eminent domain.

“It’s a positive step, but we still have a ways to go,” related a relieved Terrell Graham.

Chair wants tolls to come off, says tolls cause congestion

As toll weary Texans anxiously await Governor Greg Abbott’s promise to fix our roads without tolls to come to fruition, House Transportation Committee Chair Joe Pickett is one of the few taking action to make it happen. At yesterday’s House Transportation Committee meeting, Pickett continued his war against toll ‘managed’ lanes on several fronts.

First, he argued that tolls are actually causing congestion on some roads.

“Toll projects actually exacerbate congestion. The one in my community does,” proclaimed a determined Pickett. Pickett’s referring to the Cesar Chavez Border Highway toll managed lane project where only 6% of traffic utilizes the lanes, leaving 94% of commuters stuck in congestion.

Pickett told KVIA News in El Paso last year that, “Things have changed and if you want to lessen congestion, you open up the roads to everyone.”

Lone Star Rail survives through link to I-35 toll lanes

The saying that two things are inevitable — death and taxes — just got expanded to three things: death, taxes, and government boondoggles that never die. Yesterday, the day after the Alamo Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (AAMPO) unanimously rejected funding further study of the Lone Star Rail which was on the heels of the Capitol Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO) pulling its funding, the Bexar County Commissioners Court passed a resolution to transfer the Lone Star Rail environmental study from the Lone Star Rail District to the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). So now, not only will every Texan’s state gasoline taxes be paying for this rail boondoggle at the state level, the resolution also called for moving the rail corridor over to Interstate-35, despite the Texas GOP platform's plank opposing rail.

The Lone Star Rail project envisions a 77-mile commuter rail between Austin and San Antonio, and it’s been studied since the creation of the Lone Star Rail District by the Texas Legislature in 1997. Over $20 million in taxpayer funds have already been spent on studying the feasibility of the corridor, and the price tag is somewhere between $2-$3 billion (that’s a big range). Union Pacific announced in February it would not allow the rail project to utilize its tracks. The feds passed on granting the project federal funding. Then the Chair of CAMPO, Will Conley, decided enough is enough and led the charge to have the board vote to defund the project August 8, leading all to believe it was the death knell for the Lone Star Rail.

Mayor Adler's $720 million transportation bond never made sense. Sure, a majority of the council members are enamored with bike lanes, sidewalks and beautification. But the work could have been done for a lot less. (With matching state and federal funds the total is ~$1.2 billion.)

Cut to the chase: This bond package is really about implementing the closure of street lanes on virtually all of the major arteries into downtown Austin. More precisely, the conversion of existing lanes to bus-only lanes. This is already authorized by CAMPO. (Adler, Kitchen, Garza and Gallo were on the CAMPO Board in June 2015 when the conversion of 7 arterials were adopted into the 2040 Plan. The plan called for making the switch in 2020.) Please see the 2040 Plan project description for "South Lamar-Burnet" below. This "BRT enhancement" is lane reduction from Ben White to 183 via Burnet Rd. Six other projects in the plan get lane reductions too. (Riverside, N Lamar etc)

Despite repeated defeats at the polls, a controversial light rail system remains in San Antonio’s planning documents.

City officials say, “It is important not to rule out any method or mode of transportation.”

National transportation expert Randal O’Toole retorts, “I suspect that they have ruled out dirigibles, helicopters and pod cars. Rail should be ruled out for the same reason: It is expensive and few will use it.”

“It’s not really about rail or offering commuters options, it’s about rent-seeking developers looking for their next handout, courtesy of San Antonio taxpayers,” said Terri Hall, founder of Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom.

This is great news for taxpayers. The habit of raiding road taxes and tolls for non-road purposes is rampant among government agencies, and it's high time they're held to account and make the taxpayers whole for their breach of trust and violation of truth in taxation. This revival of the once dormant commerce clause is long overdue!

New York: Court Declares Toll Diversion Illegal

Federal judge finds New York toll road system violated the constitution by using motorist funds to subsidize recreational facilities.

August 16, 2016

The Newspaper.com

Motorists will no longer be forced to pay road tolls to fund New York's 525-mile network of barge canals thanks to a federal court ruling handed down last week. The American Trucking Associations sued the state, arguing that road users have paid over a billion dollars in tolls that enriched the New York State Canal System without any tangible benefits for the highway system. US District Court Judge Colleen McMahon agreed that the diversion of tolls for non-motoring purposes was unconstitutional.

Judge McMahon had initially tossed the lawsuit on technical grounds, but she was shot down by the Second Circuit US Court of Appeals, which sent the case back for a ruling on the merits. The second time around, Judge McMahon sided with the truckers.

Nichols parrots Rick Perry's road policy: 'There are no free roads'

He thinks we're stupid - as if Texans aren't aware that there are no free roads. Every time we buy a tank of gas, we're paying a federal and state gasoline tax to build and maintain our public highway system. Sen. Robert Nichols chairs the Senate Transportation Committee and has blocked any anti-toll reform bills, especially taking the toll off the road once the debt is retired. He's fine with perpetual new taxation in the hands of unelected boards, which is squeezing taxpayers right off our public highways. Yet Nichols claims tax money is hard to come by. Really? Texas voters just gave the highway department $5 billion more in NEW tax revenues every year with passage of Prop 1 (2014) and Prop 7 (2015). Let's not forget that legislators have raided our road taxes for non-road purposes for decades, then come crying to us that we're out of money. We're not short of tax money, we're short on holding lawmakers accountable for the taxes we already pay!

Nichols statement is also misleading - as if the user of the road is the one paying for that toll road. Not so -- 100% of toll projects now coming online are paid for in full or in part with your tax money, yet they're still charging you tolls to drive on them. It's a Texas-sized DOUBLE TAX scheme! Nichols is well aware of this, yet he keeps using Rick Perry's tired ol' talking points that there are no free roads when taxpayers are well aware we're paying plenty of taxes for FREEways.

Sen. Robert Nichols says there's no such thing as a 'free road,' all East Texans should care about toll roadsThursday, August 11, 2016By Augusta RobinsonTyler Telegraph

Although Loop 49 may be the only toll road regularly traveled by some East Texans, Texas Senate District 3 Sen. Robert Nichols said toll roads are something everyone in the region and the state should appreciate.

“I hear people say, 'I’d rather drive on a free road than a toll road,'” Nichols said. “Well there is no such thing as a free road. You’re either using tax money, which is hard to come by, or you’re going to charge somebody for actually using a new road.”

Report reveals private equity toll roads a bad deal for taxpayers

Public private partnerships are one thing both liberal and conservatives can agree on - they're a BAD deal for taxpayers.

Report Examines Equity In Toll Road DealsPolicy paper from the Center for American Progress addresses misconceptions about the way toll roads are financed.The Newspaper.comAugust 12, 2016

States have increasingly turned to tolling as a solution to heir funding and infrastructure problems. Private tolling companies end up with very little skin of their own in the game when making deals to take over roads, according to a report released Wednesday by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. The group reviewed the US Department of Transportation's Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) federal loan program and found that the two dozen toll road projects it financed with taxpayer dollars had an average value of $1.3 billion, but the average equity investment was just $183 million, or 14 percent.
Read more: Report reveals private...

Cintra hands SH 130 to its creditors

Texas’ first foreign-owned toll road handed to its creditorsBy Terri HallAugust 15, 2016Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research

It was so predictable. The people of Texas revolted against former Governor Rick Perry’s grand network of toll roads, once dubbed the Trans Texas Corridor, and many grassroots groups that sprung up to oppose it predicted its eventual demise. The press, always eager to jump on the ribbon cuttings, seldom show you the angling inside bankruptcy court, yet that’s where State Highway 130 Concession Company ended up. As part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Spain-based Cintra and San Antonio-based Zachry ceded the delinquent toll project to its creditors Friday.

The southern 41-mile stretch of SH 130, a bypass designed to avoid Austin traffic from Mustang Ridge to Seguin, opened with much fanfare in November of 2012, including an appearance by Perry who hailed this first public private partnership (or P3) as highway nirvana and ‘visionary.’ But crony capitalism is as old as dirt and taxpayers didn’t see it as anything other than graft.

Panama Canal expansion spells trouble for Texas roads

Tsunami of goods from Panama Canal expansion to strain Texas roadsHow much more will we be asked to shell out to handle the influx of Chinese goods coming through Texas and the United States? The global corporations always find a way to make the taxpayer foot the bill for them, so taxpayers beware.By Terri HallSelous Foundation for Public Policy ResearchAugust 2, 2016Crowds gather as the first ship enters the newly expanded Panama Canal June 26. It's unsurprising that the first cargo ship came from China.

After 10 years, $5.4 billion dollars, 40,000 workers and lots of delays, snags, and snafus, the Panama Canal expansion finally opened on June 26. But amidst all the hoopla, impacts to Texas cannot be understated. Not only will these new mega ships that offload triple the cargo onto mega trucks strain our infrastructure and clog our highways, the expansion also triples the threats to national security.

Officials admit that since there is nearly triple the capacity of the old canal, it also means transnational criminal networks have triple the space to try and smuggle people and goods into the United States. Between the refugee crisis, open borders, and rampant illegal immigration, the Panama Canal expansion is like heaping gasoline on a fire. Criminals can successfully increase their smuggling operations simply by the sheer net increase in the volume of goods and people hitting customs and border crossings.
Read more: Panama Canal expansion...

Alamo city sales tax shift called 'theft' and 'fraud'

San Antonio is using an “advanced transportation” tax to pave costly sidewalks and bike paths, and the diversion of funds from road projects is inviting a lawsuit from a taxpayer coalition.

“This is déjà vu all over again. It may be time to go back to court,” said Jeff Judson, a local businessman and senior fellow with the conservative Heartland Institute.

When voters approved an Advanced Transportation District in 2004, they added a quarter-cent to the local sales tax to fund transit, traffic safety and highway projects in Bexar County. The tax generates $60 million annually.
Read more: Alamo city sales tax...

Big government keeps criminalizing you for driving

In America, we’re way past the tipping point of being able to go about your daily life without breaking some little known, arcane law passed in the dark of night. Libertarian think tanks could bury us with the data that demonstrates the many ways government has criminalized ordinary, law abiding citizens for simply living their lives. But one of the latest and most comprehensive assaults by big government is criminalizing motorists for just about every action taken while driving your car.

Last week, the Newspaper.com exposed how many states have passed and/or greatly expanded ‘move over’ laws that require motorists to change lanes or dramatically decrease their speed when certain vehicles are on the shoulder. It ranges from emergency vehicles to cable tv trucks. The question becomes, how can a motorist tell what kind of car or truck is on the side of the road in time to actually comply? Flashing lights help, but not all classifications of vehicles that fall under move over laws have flashing lights.
Read more: Big government keeps...

Biedermann trounces Miller, but Miller on war path to trample property rights

Link to article here. (Click on the link at this site to view the video of Miller gettin' cozy with a lobbyist)

After an onslaught of threats that remain unresolved, residents of the Texas Hill Country just got a little retribution. From issues with land development and water to toll roads and property rights, Texas House District 73 yearned for new leadership. After an ugly, heated run-off election last week, it got it. Incumbent State Representative Doug Miller, an establishment Republican and staunch supporter of liberal Republican Speaker Joe Straus, was ousted by newcomer conservative businessman Kyle Biedermann of Fredericksburg. With Miller set to appear as an ‘expert witness’ on behalf of the developer of the controversial Johnson Ranch housing development, a very public showdown between neighboring landowners and this lame duck representative is taking shape.
Read more: Biedermann trounces...

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